Author Chad Carson’s Path to Financial Freedom and Full Time Real Estate Investing

In this episode we chat with Coach Chad Carson with coachcarson.com about his journey to financial freedom, real estate partnerships, common challenges for investors and Chad's thoughts of the future of real estate. 
 
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Transcript
 
Michael:
Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by,
 
Tom:
Tom Schneider.
 
Michael:
And today we are going to be having a really, really, really fun episode with author, teacher Chad Carson with CoachCarson.com . So Chad is gonna be talking to us about all things real estate, his story, how he got started, and now he's been a full time investor since his college graduation. All right, let's jump into it.
 
Theme Song
 
Michael:
Chad, thank you so much for taking the time today. Really appreciate you being here with us.
 
Chad:
Yeah, thanks, Michael. Thanks, Tom. Really great to be here as well.
 
Michael:
And so tell all of our listeners whereabouts in the country are you located.
 
Chad
So I live in Clemson, South Carolina. And probably our claim to fame is the university right next door. It's a tiny little town. But Clemson University's here the football team. And so I went to school here and then stuck around afterwards and still live here. And it's really right next to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, lots of hiking, lots outdoors, lakes. So just a good good place to live and raise a family and invest in real estate as well.
 
Michael:
Awesome. And we were just chatting before we started recording here that you got some rain from this last weather system. But everything is all good. Everything is sounded dry.
 
Chad:
As far as I know. Yeah. No emergency text, you know, you guys are about long distance investing and passive investing. You know, most of the time, I don't hear anything from the property managers. They handle it. But now it's every once in a while you do get some emergency text.
 
Michael:
So far, so good deal. Awesome. So I know you I think Tom knows you pipe in bigger pockets. It's kind of, you know, you're a big hero of mine for what you've done and what you've written. And we'll get into that in a little bit. But we'd love to get a little bit of your background and your story to start things off here.
 
Chad:
Sure. Yeah. Well, I love bigger pockets as well. And what when I first started there, it was 2003. And I graduated from college. And I was a I was a biology major in college, I played football. So I kind of was just, you know, like anybody else when they're becoming an adult trying to figure out what's what's next, what am I going to do with my life. And I was fortunate enough that my dad had rental properties. And I used to like growing up, he would drop me off at a rental property and that he had bought at a foreclosure sale in the middle of the summer in Georgia.
 
And it'll be hot in the junk everywhere and an old refrigerator and he's alright, Chad, I'll be back in a few hours cleaning that frigerator out. They had old, you know, like deer meat or something. I'm sure it sounds like I hate this business. Who would want to do real estate. So low Behold, I graduated from college, I thought why don't I just give this real estate thing a shot for a year or two. And then I'll go back to the real world after that. And 20 years, 18 years later, I'm still still doing that little side hobby of real estate investing.
 
Michael:
How great is it? It's so funny how the lens in which we learn about something or see something tends to overshadow you know, somebody of the other facts, right? Because we hear all the time Oh, I don't want to be a landlord. I don't wanna go fix toilets in the middle of the night. Or it is just you know, I don't want to go clean out refrigerators.
 
Chad:
Yes, exactly. Yeah, my brother and I were ungrateful little little guys that were complaining about that. But it was really good. It was a good learning experience to I think you all come in a side lesson, but cleaning the floors of the store or cleaning out the frigerator of your landlord. I mean, you don't want to do that forever. But it's really a good learning experience to see the basics of the dirty work of what has to be done.
 
Michael:
Absolutely. And so we're all your dad's rentals local to where you guys lit.
 
Chad:
He was in Newnan, Georgia still is he has rental properties there and he and my mom have retired and live off a rental income now. And so yeah, that was all kind of local local rentals. And then he's actually now lives in another state. So you know, it's evolved into a long distance rental arrangement for him as well.
 
Michael:
Right on and so after you graduated college and started to do your real estate side hustle, I mean, how did you get Into it full time was it was always part time or was it always full time?
 
Chad:
It was actually full time for me Luckily, I didn't need a lot of money to live right after college you know, still in the the ramen noodle stage, living and spare bedrooms of friends houses and worst case living in my camera, a Toyota Camry or a 10 or something, you know, so I was I was in that stage of life where I was really low cost no family to support it. So I just jumped in. And rather than being an investor, I was really more accurately an entrepreneur, who is just trying to find good deals, we would flip them we would either typically when I my first year to have a business partner, we've worked together the whole time, we would find deals for other people and just kind of pass them on for a small fee is what's called a wholesaler.
 
So that was how we learned the business, cut our teeth. And then but as we learned to do that, we picked up that skill of finding good deals, it was kind of a natural step to start borrowing our own money from private investors from a couple local banks. And so we started flipping some houses where we fixed them up and flipping, flip them. And then after another A few years after we built up a little bit of capital, we started doing rental properties. And that's really split now that's that's our main thing. Now we very rarely do any flips. But we do rental properties. We loan some money to other people who are flipping houses so we're more of a kind of transition into a more passive investor long run
 
Michael:
Right on you kind of covered the Whole real estate investing schema there, didn't you?
 
Chad:
Yeah, I've been fortunate to be able to do a lot of it. Yeah, I've been on the money side now a little bit more the buy and hold the flipping, I've been the one who's out there making, you know, 5, 10 offers a week, you know, knocking on doors trying to buy properties that are, you know, in distress situations or landlord. So, it's been fun to be able to do all aspects of it. And I think it's kind like I talked about earlier, some point, if you want to outsource it other people, I don't think you need to know how to be an expert on everything. Like I'm not an expert, remodeler, contractor. But it certainly helped me be able to make decisions a little bit better with our money. Knowing all the details, what has to be done,
 
Michael:
That makes sense.
 
Tom:
It's almost more important to know where your gaps are at, you know, you know, versus coming in. And hubris and you know, saying that you're the best and every as that's a great point.
 
Chad:
Yeah, yep.
 
Michael:
And was all this local to where you were Chad?
 
Chad:
It was at the time. Yeah, so I've always invested in Clemson, I was fortunate that, you know, not a lot of people in the country aren't as fortunate that the deals that we were flipping also transition nicely into rental properties. And actually, my very first rental property was a house that I bought from another investor, the investor owner financed it to me with a really small downpayment. And I moved in briefly for like six months, and I realized is like a 2324 year old kid, as I can't afford this house with like $750 payments, and it's the best it is sold to me. So I quickly moved out and rented it out, and was able to at least turn it into a rental property.
 
So that is my story. But I have over time, my wife and I part of our our story is that she's a Spanish teacher, we love traveling. And so we always knew kind of the back of our minds, the rental business is going at once we want to turn that into an income stream that we can use to travel and have a little bit more flexibility. And so several trips in our time together, 2009, 2017, we've gone abroad and kind of taken our backpacks before kids and just wandered around in South America. And then 2017, we had our two kids who were three and five at the time. And we moved to Ecuador for 17 months, and put them in school there. And they were able to study set learn Spanish with kids there and and so what started as a local business turned into a more of a long distance business and kind of forced us to think about systems and approaches and property managers. And how do we do this without me having to be there all the time?
 
Michael:
Oh, this is so cool. I have so many follow up questions. But what a neat story. What a neat story. So with all the local stuff. Did you have property managers, were you utilizing property managers when you're doing the buy and hold type stuff?
 
Chad:
Yeah, we started off doing everything ourselves. So not saying that's the right way to do it. But we were the property manager and say we as a business partner as well, early on, we actually divided up the business into like, the first step was acquisitions, and then financing, and then fixing up the property and then farming it out, which is either selling it or renting it out. And we basically divided it down the middle I was the acquisitions guy, I was the financing person who worked on getting bank or private money. And then he would manage the rehabs and then either get it rented out or sell it. And so we we did all that in house in terms of the early on property management.
 
And we over time, the the model we did was we grew kind of internal assistant who started off as a bookkeeper. And then she's really competent as a bookkeeper. And we saw the she had other skills, communication skills. And so we kind of groomed her into being more of a property manager, where she would do 90% of the tasks. So the you know, when we put signs out or put ads in the online or took calls from people or talk to people, former landlord, she would do almost all of that, I would still be the underwriter to decide, yes, we're going to rent to this person or not. And I would sign the lease agreements, still do some things like that. But we basically built our own internal property manager for a little property management company for a little while. But then over time, we'd grown a little bit bigger. And it outgrew her capacity to do as much. And she also decided to retire. So we just in the last year, we've moved more to third party property management with a couple different companies. So we've transitioned into just having being more of a pure investor, and having other people do do the property management stuff
 
Tom:
In transitioning to that more of a buy and hold strategy versus wholesaling. I'd love to hear what were some of the early kind of like learning points that are no struggles of just getting in and being more that kind of buy and hold strategy is I would imagine doing self property management. There's some challenges there but kind of across the board. I'd love your thoughts on.
 
Chad:
Yeah, I mean, yeah, the definitely the actually learning how to be a manager was was a big growing curve, you know, and I wish we had more time of dating myself a little bit, but 2007 and eight was when we were really started transitioning into more full time buying hold. And that also happened to be the time that the Great Recession happened and rate time and I
 
Tom:
Think everyone was forced to do that. Anyway,
 
Chad:
I was forced to do it. That's why we couldn't flip as many houses that we had just bought in 2007. So that was a big learning experience. I think the other thing we just a lot about we just had we had learning lessons where we may mistakes on how to how to analyze the numbers for a rental property. And this is a big takeaway that I know you guys probably talked about too, is that if you don't have a good estimate of what your maintenance and your capital expenses are, and you underestimate those, you know, when you buy and hold your, you're holding this thing for me, you're nobody else is going to bail you out of this, like with a flip, you could, you can make a few mistakes, even worst case scenario, you lost a little bit of money, you get rid of the property, and you move on to the next one, with a buy and hold. I mean, this is this is it, you better do your analysis right up front, because it's not going to get any better over time. I mean, the rents might go up in value out a little bit, but it's a long, slow process. And so we bought some properties and just got too aggressive and underestimated a lot of repairs, where we thought we're gonna make $200 a month in cash flow, we're really negative 50 or negative hundred bucks a month. Hopefully, I'm not the only one has ever done that. But
 
Michael:
You’re in very good company, man.
 
Chad:
All right. Yeah, so we made that mistake. And but I guess that's the way I learned, you know, I could read in a book, I could listen to a podcast, and then you make the mistake. And now it's burned into my head, wait a minute, like you have to replace heating and air units, wait a minute, this is a 60 year old property and the sewer system or the, you know, the pipes underneath the house are going to start breaking after a long time. So I think some of those old house problems, Tom, were the are some of the lessons, I think we learned that you have to understand how houses put together again, you don't have to be the expert on doing all that stuff. But if you're gonna invest your money, and especially investing directly in properties, you do need to be the asset manager who thinks about the long term life of your systems, which types of properties are most efficient. So we found out that, you know, if you have a house that has all wooden siding, and you have to paint that every five or 10 years, that's a lot more costly than having a property, this brick siding, and has metal trim around the outside of the house, as you know, double pane vinyl windows, and all that low maintenance stuff that seems just kind of boring details. But those kind of things make the difference between a property that makes money over 10 to 20 year period, and a property that becomes an alligator and eats all your money instead.
 
Michael:
It's such a good point to chat about knowing those type of nuances and intricacies of whatever the local effect on the property is going to have. Right. And in harsh weather climates, you want to have maybe a different exterior than in a hotter climate. So knowing all that stuff, I think is so critical. Chad, I'm curious to know about your partner, and how you guys whoever it is got linked up, because something I get questions about all the time is how do I find a partner? And something I've always said is find someone who has what you don't whether it's money time to experience go look to partner with someone, as opposed to whoever your best friend is just because it's easy. So how did you two meet?
 
Chad:
I think your advice is right, I think we did bring different things to the party. But we were both beginners in real estate investing when we got into it. And I was when I played football in college at Clemson he had an online business, which at the time was a weird thing in 2000, you know, 02, 03 to have a internet business. And he had it was actually related to Clemson sports. And so I was he was doing interviews with some of the football players. And I just met him that way and kind of hit it off talked about finance and real estate something else. And so over time, we just went to some classes together and said, Hey, this is cool, we ought to do this together. And when I decided to move back up to Clemson, right after college was over, we just jumped in together, we actually started an LLC, each of us put 250 bucks into this LLC.
 
And so we had a $500 in capital in this thing. We actually read a book called The E-Myth at the time really awesome. business book, and book, it was the first book we read about business and it said, Hey, when you start a business, you ought to go and treat yourself like a big corporation and say, Alright, here's the CFO, here's the CEO. Here's the person who handles bookkeeping. And so we drew this like diagram of all the different roles in our little flipping business. And I said, Tommy, which one do you want to take? Alright, I'll take this one. You took it we just like like alternating back and forth. It's totally random. And, but but it was a really good exercise, because it did force us to divide our task and ask like, Alright, who's good at what he was better at just working with contractors and saying, Hey, this is what it is, can you do any better on that price, he was just kind of haggling and staying on focus, and a really good project manager.
 
And then I was more than a communicator, and going out negotiating with people and finding sellers and kind of the more the sales communication role. And we just divided that up. And we had some crossover here and there, but I think we were, what we both contributed was we didn't have to have a lot of overhead and hire anybody for a while because we contributed a bunch of time to it personally. And then eventually it became profitable to the sense that we could start hiring some people particularly on the rental side, but the thing that made it work was exactly your advice. Make sure you're each bringing something different to the party. The other thing was just aligning your long term goals and Is this a good person, you got to trust your partner with somebody This is all about trust is somebody who you believe in you can trust. If there's any inkling at all, there's just not even if it's not trust, it's not a good personality fit. Just don't do it. Like just move on. There's better there's better ways to spend Your time because it's kind of like a marriage, but without all the other benefits of marriage for a long time, and for better or worse, and, you know, a lot of partnerships get ugly, because there's not an alignment of a lot of those things we just talked about.
 
Tom:
Yeah.
 
Michael:
For anybody considering a partnership, please rewind the last four minutes and listen to that again.
 
Tom:
Yeah. You know, I like about two is just thinking of like, what people bring to the table, you know, it's not all like one side, it could be experience, it could be they have a lot of extra time to work on it. It could be a lot of capital. I mean, just like, as Michael was alluding to earlier, and I mean, just to hammer on the point, like, yeah, trust, if that's not there, like just throw it all out, it really, really doesn't matter.
 
Chad:
Yeah, I didn't want to hop on that one. We've done other partnerships since then. So we have a company. But we've partnered with other people, and exactly that role, where we brought the energy expertise, the ability to go find deals, somebody else was super busy at a job, but has some capital and credit. And we did partners like credit partnerships where they would buy, we'd bring a deal, they'd buy the property, and then we found a way to split up the deal. And they were a bit more passive. And we've used a lot of creative financing to get that done, like lease options and, and other kind of contracts. But real estate, so cool. In that way, there are a lot of different ways to split deals up. And it happens all the way up from the very tiny deals all the way up to, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in commercial real estate, there's using options and leases and contracts, that sky's the limit on how creative you can get if you get the basic, you know, arrangement of what you're talking about that everybody brings some value, you agreed in writing how it's gonna work. And to me, that's one of the most fun parts of the business.
 
Tom:
I got a question for each. I think a lot of people have can offer one of these things get money or skilled or whatnot. But I think a lot of people are concerned about getting taken advantage of like, what is their kind of BS detector on somebody they might want to do work with? Do you have any advice for people in vetting out a potential partner, either on the capital side or on the operation side on enter your method of kind of identifying like, is this a good actor?
 
Chad:
I just like to move slowly. Yeah, I think some of this is like, even outside of the real estate sphere. Most of us have worked with people before most of us have been taken advantage before typically is moving too fast. It's trying to get it done. Now, I read a book early on in my career, as well called the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
 
Tom:
Love your book list!
 
 
Michael:
Killer list. Chad.
 
Tom:
Keep them coming.
 
Chad:
Yeah, I go back to that book all the time. Because there's so many life lessons, it's about knowing yourself, but also how you communicate with people, when his comments was when you're working with systems and business, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs want to go fast, they just want to make everything efficient, do the best thing. But when you're working with people, like slow is fast, like going slower, and slowing things down and getting to know somebody. And I've constantly been reminded this over time, whether it's working with money partners, where you know, I just got to know somebody for a year or two. And do I trust this person do I like them is my personality align. And so many times, we just want to jump into something really fast.
 
But when people go slowly, take your time, ask questions, get to know the person, then and only then do you start looking at some of the details of the real estate deal. Because all of that the foundation of all that other stuff is completely dependent on that relationship and that trust. So I think that's my tip, it's not really a hack or something you do fast. But if you're long distance, which I know a lot of listeners are, it's gonna be a little bit more challenging. But maybe one of the silver linings of COVID is that everybody's doing zoom anyway. So just getting used to having a zoom with a property manager having a if you are going to partner with somebody who's like a general partner, don't let them push you into something too fast. They're trying to push you really fast. That's probably the wrong person. I've heard somebody give a tip where they've said, I'd like to invest money with you. This is the limited partner talking.
 
But I want to watch a couple deals that you do before I do that. And they get all the documentation for that deal. They would follow the whole thing through as if they had invested with that person ask questions, they paid attention to details. And that takes a lot of patience takes a lot of time. But I think that's so worth it. You'll get to know somebody, you'll get to know how they do things. If you just study them for a little while, six months, nine months, maybe a year after that you've cemented that even though they're they're a good person to work with it or not. And then that that time you've invested in that downpayment, of relationship building you've invested can last for 20, 30 years after that,
 
Tom:
Love it, there's this theme in poker called being tight and aggressive. And it's like, you know, having kind of taken that time to get to know someone doing all that right work. And then once it's like, oh, yeah, this is right, then it's being aggressive and moving quickly. I love that.
 
Chad:
There you go.
 
Tom:
Moving slow and fast.
 
Michael:
It is such good advice. Because Yeah, I know, every single time I've been burned by someone is because I moved way too quickly. Because I felt cornered felt forced, it felt like I was my hand was forced. And yeah, it worked out horribly and to the opposite. Everyone that I spent time getting to know it's worked out beautifully or it just never worked out at all and that's okay too. But I spent the time to learn that
 
Chad:
And I think about myself Why did I do that? Because I've done the same thing like I think it was because I was I had a scarcity mindset that absolutely another deal. There's not gonna be another partner, right? You know, there's always another deal. There's always another partner. So as a brand new investor, don't get pressured to think that you're going to miss out on something. There have been deals for 100 to thousands of years in real estate, there will be deals for hundreds and thousands of years. Again, don't worry about it, you're gonna be just fine.
 
Michael:
The deal of a lifetime only comes around about once a week. So
 
Chad
yeah, there you go.
 
Michael:
Awesome. Well, Chad, I know that you're also in the real estate education space, you have coach Carson, calm, curious to know what you see some common hurdles, challenges are for new investors,
 
Chad:
I think before knowledge is confidence. Like I think, you know, I deal with so many people who are competent professionals. And in some other space, you know, they're an engineer, they're a salesperson, they're a nurse, janitor, whatever, they're good at what they do. And then here, they come into real estate, and they're an adult trying to learn this thing. And they're also gonna invest a bunch of their money in it. That's just a recipe for like, lack of confidence. And just man I can't. And so that's one of the biggest hurdles that I see. My solution is kind of like, this is sports analogy, Coach Carson, kind of why bring that to the table, is that anything time you're trying to do something big, you just got to break it down into really little small pieces, like the Dave Ramsey baby steps.
 
Because when you do that, it becomes less intimidating. And you build confidence on that one little thing. And I'll give you an example. Like something out when people are first starting, I often recommend that they just focus on your What is your strategy? Like Don't worry about getting into analyzing your market, don't worry about the money yet. Don't worry about any of that. Let's just talk about like you and your finances and where you are. Are you a brand new beginner, are you you have a million bucks in the bank and you're trying to like diversify, or you have 50,000 bucks in the bank and you're trying to grow that nest egg, depending on where you are, that's gonna sort of dictate which strategy makes sense, whether that's house hacking, buy and hold rentals, long distance rentals, turnkey. You know, there's a lot of different viable strategies out there. Don't try to copy cookie cutters that you heard on a podcast because it worked for Chad or worked for somebody else, you know, have that self knowledge of saying, Alright, here's where I am. Here's where what I need in my life financially, and just be okay  with that strategy. be okay with doing one deal, even though people on bigger pockets are doing thousand deals in one year, you know, man, that's intimidating. Like, I can't I can't do that.
 
Michael:
I could never do that.
 
Chad:
Yeah, I could never do that. So therefore I must not be successful. I think that's the challenge is that you can if you compare yourself to other people, that's going to kill your confidence. If you try to take on too much at one time, that's gonna kill your confidence. So be okay with who you are. be okay with where you are. Break it down into the next step and say, what's the next thing I need to figure out? All right, I got my strategy. I'm going to do house hacking. Alright, good. What's next? All right, I need to figure out my target market. Where am I gonna invest? Alright, let's talk about that. How do you analyze the market. So you break it down in those steps, and it becomes much more manageable.
 
And it's kind of like, you know, you're going on a hike or a journey, you just kind of check one milestone off another milestone. And that's the cool thing about real estate to me is that you don't have to jump all in at one time. Um, there's a bunch of little steps, even down to the contract. If you get a property under contract, that seems really intimidating. But there's a due diligence clause where you can you ask your local attorney or local agent to if you made a big mistake, and you shouldn't pay that price, you have about 14 days maybe to evaluate that and get out of it. So I think there's so many little steps like that we can move forward with low risk or no risk and build your confidence to the point where you get some momentum eventually.
 
Michael:
That's great advice. So you're also the author of retire early with real estate, a great book, I've read it, we're actually gonna be reading it for our roof stock Academy book club next month. We're very excited about it. Yeah, it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be a lot of fun. You're gonna come join us for our book club session next month. What motivated you to write that?
 
Chad:
Yeah, it was actually right in the middle of when I was traveling to Ecuador when I wrote it. And I actually had a conversation with Brandon Turner BiggerPockets. We were at a conference about a year before that. And we were just chatting about his books he was doing, they were doing pretty well. I was just picking his brain. And he's like, Oh, you want to write a book, you know, go submit this. And it's kind of early stages of their book, book business. And I started I like the idea. I've been writing a blog and thousands and thousands of words, initially, I didn't think anybody would read that stuff. And then more people started reading it as Oh, that's cool. So I had a lot of words on paper, but I kind of condensed like, what is it all about that? What are some of the messages I'm trying to convey? And what are the things that are important to me and one of the I think the core messages that I try to get across in my blog, and my podcast is that real estate investing is a vehicle. It's a tool, but it's taking you to a place where you're doing more of what matters in your life.
 
So it's really about your life. It's about working backwards from what's important to you, what are your values? How would you spend your time on a day to day basis, if you had unlimited money, and money wasn't an issue anymore? I think those answers are why most of us are doing it. And very often it gets turned around where we're like, it's all about the thousand units. And it's about the doing really well which is which is cool. You know, I'm not discounting any of that stuff. But I wanted to write a book that not only validated like the small investor who's investing for lifestyle and who's trying to, you know, maybe have five properties, get them paid off and have three or 4000 bucks coming in and allowing them to work a part time job instead of working a full time job at 40 years old.
 
Like that kind of lifestyle business is what earlier retirement meant to me that was the idea of getting control of your money so that you can get to control your time and your life. And start asking yourself that question like, Alright, what does matter to me what I want to do, and I grew up, you know that same question we asked when we were 15 years old, 10 years old, like when I grew up, I'm going to be an astronaut. When I grew up, I'm going to start this big thing that's going to help the world and save the world. You know, when we get to be adults, we kind of get that creativity and that imagination ground out of us because we get into the practical stuff. And so I wanted to write a book that kind of inspired on the big picture of, hey, what could you do, if money were not an object, and then go from there and give like a blueprint. So it's kind of the big picture, here are the steps you can take to climb up the mountain, whether you're brand new beginner, whether you're intermediate, whether you're advanced, here are the steps you take and the things you need to think about if you actually want to live off of your rental income and have that flexibility.
 
Michael:
That's so great. Yeah, so often I hear or the question asked, you know, what's your goal and people give $1 figure unit count figure that really needs to go a step further than that is to know what is that money your unit count gonna allow you to do? What's the life that you want to be living?
 
Tom:
Yeah, yeah. The Why just because it's such a struggle, you know, in going through it, like, there's setbacks all the time. And it's like, you have a really flimsy why on, you know, not a clear kind of definition of like what done you know, where you want to go makes it that much more difficult to keep going without that more solid aspect?
 
Chad:
Absolutely. Yeah, my real estate is fun. I love the business too. But I recognize there's, there's kind of a variation on the people who get into it, how passionate they are about it, like some people would be fine, getting a few properties, letting somebody else do all the work. And they want to go start a nonprofit to do something completely on their own related to real estate. You know, I'm a nerd, you guys are nerds. We're like doing podcasts about this all the time. But there's some people that are kind of partially nerds about it. And you know, that's okay, too. But if you have that passion in mind, and you have that in mind, it's more than just kind of fluffy feel good stuff.
 
I mean, it it dictates how you make decisions about the types of properties you buy, the scale of how you grow your business, the types of contracts and deals you get into. I mean, for example, my business partner and I have mainly stayed with small residential. And we've gotten into some like smaller multifamily like 12 plexes. And we bought some bigger properties as well. But we really like the small scale. And we've kind of kept our financing. And the way we do deals pretty simple, like we're not doing syndications and going out and starting, you know, big funds, although we could have had a lot of opportunities to do that. But working it backwards and saying, why am I doing this, I want to be able to turn the business on and off and go travel for 17 months, or I want to start a business like coach Carson, where I made zero money for several years, because it's just fun. And I like it's a passion to be able to do that you've got to build a business that not only makes money, but also has certain require, certain capabilities and systems that allow you to do whatever you want to do. So it's very practical, when you start from the end, kind of work it backwards.
 
Michael:
I think that's such a good point. I know for me, I kind of personally fell victim to that mindset that, you know, the former mindset of, Oh, I got to get to 100 units, 100 units, hundred units. And then it just got to be to this kind of overwhelming point. And I said, Wait a minute, why am I doing like, why is that number important? What is that going to give me? What if I just rearranged some of the things that made my life simpler, could I get the same result or a better result. And so learning to do less with more, I think is really important too. So I love that point you made Chad. Okay, so you can do real estate full time since you're out of college. And I hear so many people, especially in the academy talked about wanting to retire early and looking to you know, make real estate then do real estate full time. Give us a day in the life of a full time real estate investor. When you're not in Ecuador.
 
Chad:
Yeah, that's a good question. You know, I still like work. I think that's one of the secrets that people hear about retiring early.
 
Michael:
Because we're nerds, man.
 
Chad:
I enjoy it like I do like it. But I think the main differences is there's a lot less pressure. I know when we first started even up until 2014 and 15, even we had some of the properties, same number of properties. There's just always the pressure of like next month, I got to produce again next month, I got to do more and get into some of these plateaus where the cash flow continues to come in. Yes, there's some problems. Yes, the heat and air blows up here and there. Yes, there's some cash flow kind of rollercoasters here and there, but getting to the point where it's pretty consistent on the amount of money you can get coming in, that allows you to kind of change your schedule around as well. For example, I used to take all of our leasing calls, I used to take calls from people, you know, when you put a property for rent, you get dozens of calls, and you're on the phone all the time, like I do deep work, I do creative work, I do things that are not necessarily really urgent, and I paid other people to do the sales calls and taking care of maintenance issues.
 
And and so I think that's that's the thing that shifted, that doesn't mean I'm not aware of those like I still I think all of us no matter how, you know, quote passive, you get should still pay attention to the detail. So like I look at the property management reports every month, I'm paying attention very closely to the cash flow and the amount of rent that's being collected. And are there any kind of exception reporting Are there any weird things on the report this month that are different than normal? I equate that actually To the like, when you watch the matrix, I think it's so cool when he finally can start seeing everything and like digital numbers, you know, 01010. And so I've always compared the point where you're stepping back from your business to something like that, where you look at reports, and you look at, you know, your analysis of your business and numbers. And then when you see something weird or something unusual, you then jump into the matrix, you go in there, and you figure it out, and talk to the property manager and say, Hey, what's up with this thing? Let me get in the weeds too.
 
So I just I've had to be in the weeds in the last month or two, we had a fire, unfortunately, for the one of our rental properties, and no one was hurt. That was my first question. But we've had to deal with getting bids from contractors dealing with insurance, and how's this gonna work? And how did you tie those two things together. And so that was a new one. For me, I'm spending more than a normal amount of time on that kind of project that comes up every once in a while. But on a typical week, when it's just, Hey, I'm going to do a little bit of bookkeeping, I'm going to send a text message to the property manager. I mean, that could be an hour or two per week, probably max, you know, 110 properties. So it just ranges depending on how involved you want to be.
 
And also what's going on, I like to get in on the big side, the one we're selling a property when we have an insurance issue like that, when we every once in a while just meeting up with the property managers and talking strategy talking, Hey, how are we screening tenants? What's your best practice here? You know, there's some things like that that go on. But the kind of day to day week to week basis, it's looking at your bookkeeping, looking at those numbers, asking questions, sending a few texts here and there. And that's, that's kind of a normal routine for me.
 
Michael:
Right on. So not to one up you by any means. But I actually had two fires in the same building on a property that I own, and I'm dealing with the insurance thing. So I don't know how it's going for you. I hope it's going well. But if you want to chat offline more about it, I'd be more than happy to public adjusters came and saved my bacon. That's a big, big, big plug for that profession. I was a big fan of that. So I hope it continues to go well. But yeah, let me know if you need some recommendations. happy to share.
 
Chad:
I'm in the early stages. So yeah, I think we'll we'll connect on that. And I'm planning on doing a podcast at some point on my, you know, lessons, the good and bad of what I'm probably screwing some stuff up as well. But yeah, that's that's the that's my plan in the next couple of months to share what I've learned.
 
Michael:
Okay, perfect. I look forward to hearing that.
 
Tom:
I got a question for you sort of a crystal ball question. So changing world going through a pandemic, lots of technology advancements, how do you see this evolving real estate investing with your strategy or general kind of an open ended question of just the confluence of changes in the world and how you see it affecting real estate investment?
 
Chad:
Yeah, I love that question. I think one of the trends and this has already been ongoing before COVID-19 came about, I read a book, it's another book recommendation. Big Shifts Ahead by…
 
Tom:
I heard you drop Deep Work to another great, great book.
 
Chad:
Yeah. Another another reference.
 
Tom:
We love John Burns. Sorry, you're talking about Big Shifts Ahead.
 
Chad:
Okay. So you know, John Burns, okay. I don't know him personally. But I like his work and his book, Big Shifts Ahead.
 
Tom:
We had him on the podcast before he's yet he's a super entertaining guy. We had our back, I'm sorry for interrupting. Go ahead.
 
Michael:
No, he's a legend.
 
Chad:
He's really smart. his company's built is very good with analytics. And what my understanding is they advise a lot of hedge funds and builders and construction, who are looking at the whole country and trying to figure out the big trends. And so one of the to your question, though, one of the big trends that I think is most relevant for us, as investors trying to pick where we're going to invest, and you know, where we put our money is just the flow of people like where are the demographics of people moving and why. And one of the interesting things that john put out there was that, first of all, there's growth all around the country, I mean, country is doing pretty well, if you look at the big picture, let's be optimistic here. Like in the big picture, we're still have a rule of law, we still have contracts with our economy is really hard to replicate.
 
You're not when I travel around the world, it's kind of evident, you have good people everywhere, but to replicate the recipe of what we have going on with availability of credit, and Mark real estate markets and contracts. And it's just this recipe is pretty unique that we have. So United States is a great place to invest your money. That's my main takeaway. But then within the United States, john burns points out that a lot of the movement of people has been to the south of Southwest, southeast. They're just kind of outpacing growth in those areas. So I'm in South Carolina, Georgia, you know, Alabama's kind of seeing that North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, you know, been a big way. A lot of people know that it's already on the map, but also Arizona, Southern California to an extent. But you know, there's a weather thing there. But also within that kind of movement to the south. There's a movement from city centers, to suburban areas. And he actually coined a term called surban. I don't know if you guys talked about it on the podcast yet.
 
Tom:
We didn't talk about but I love it.
 
Chad:
Yeah. So the suburban, it's like a hybrid. You have a lot of millennials, for example, lived in urban areas, pre forming their family, they love public transit. They love biking and walking paths and parks. So a lot of these urban things you think about good restaurants, good quality of life. Well, they're moving to the suburbs because they want to buy houses, the urban areas are out of their reach because of the prices. But when they go to the suburbs, what are they looking for? They're looking for urban like qualities. And so one of my favorite locations to invest in and help other people invest in are, you know, go to a city center, go to go to an Atlanta, go to a Charlotte, go to an Austin, Texas, but then go outside the city and find these, you know, little pockets, these little suburban places at 50,000 people 20,000 people, hundred thousand people, and they have their own little gravity, their own little town center and find the ones that have some quality of life factors.
 
So it could be a college town where I am, that's an example. You've got football games, you've got, you know, intellectual stimulation, you've got culture, there could be other areas that have natural beauty. I think a lot of places Colorado, for example, you know, people are moving there, because of the quality of life. And businesses are moving there, high tech businesses are moving there, because their employees want to live there, these millennials and some of these people who want that quality of life. So I've actually been trying to take my town and Clemson into that I'm kind of getting into local politics and have a nonprofit trying to build bike trails. And I've been trying to convey to them like that trend is happening. And if you're not investing in like quality amenities, and your little small town, to attract those people, you're missing the boat, it's not the traditional, bring in this huge manufacturer who's going to have all these big factories somewhere, a lot of its going to be small tech businesses and people who are working remotely.
 
And so as real estate investors, we can also pay attention to that and kind of follow some of those trends. And I think particularly for those who aren't big, huge hedge funds, trying to find our one or two little deals, I think we have to go to some of the smaller markets in order to find the opportunities where there's actually still some meat on the bone, you know, some opportunities to buy some properties that cash flow, and have some good growth potential.
 
Tom:
That's awesome. there's a there's a fund out there that focuses very specifically on this kind of tier two cities. And you're right that a lot of those ones have been kind of picked off, you know, the larger private equity and hedge funds and funds are you know, made. It's so competitive. But that's a great point as far as kind of crystal ball on where to go and looking for these, you know, just outside of those major cities. The great john burns reference. Love it.
 
Michael:
Tom, any final questions for Chad before them get out of here?
 
Tom:
No, that was great. Yeah, that was great.
 
Michael:
Well, Chad, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. If folks have more questions for you want to learn more about you? where's the best place where they can do that? or reach out to you?
 
Chad:
Sure. Yeah, everything online for me starts at coachcarson.com. I've been writing a blog there for years I've want to guides and articles and how to kind of in depth how to articles also have been a lot of fun with my podcast and YouTube channel too. So if you like podcasts have the real estate and Financial Independence Podcast focuses on some of the things we talked about today and more the nuts and bolts and practical side of using real estate to retire early to achieve financial independence.
 
I also interview some other people, mainly, you know, students, I do have some experts on there. But a lot of it's just real people who are getting it done, how they bought their property, how they, you know, grew to three or four properties. So trying to focus just on the nitty gritty nuts and bolts. And I do the same thing with my YouTube channel where I kind of just get behind the camera kind of coach whiteboard style, you know, drawing on a little whiteboard or something. And here's how you do a debt snowball. Here's how you do a house hack. And so if you like those kind of kind of nuts and bolts type approach to real estate. That's, that's what I try to do.
 
Michael:
Fantastic.
 
Tom:
Awesome. We'll add a link in the podcast description.
 
Michael:
Perfect. Chad, thank you again for taking the time. So looking forward to having you on the academy book club next month. Appreciate that in advance. And we'll catch you later.
 
Chad:
Yeah. Thanks, Tom. Thanks, Michael. It's been a pleasure.
 
Michael:
Okay, everybody, that was our episode a big, big, big thank you to Chad Carson. That was a ton of fun. Thank you so much for joining us a lot of really great nuggets in there. So go back and give it a read, listen, rewind it, take notes, tons and tons of great content in there. So again, a big thank you to Chad. And we look forward to having Chad back on the Roofstock Academy book club session for the month of November. And so if you were thinking about joining the academy or not sure, check us out at RoofstockAcademy.com and feel free to take advantage of the book club session that we're going to be having for the month of November where we have Chad back on. Thanks everyone for listening. And if you'd like that episode, feel free to give us a rating and review wherever it is you listen your podcasts and we look forward to seeing you on the next one.
 
Tom:
Happy investing